Iran Today by Dilip Hiro - Politico’s (London) 2006 £9.99

It remains to be seen whether the Bush administration will launch another reckless military adventure. But it does seem fairly certain that Washington is incapable of executing a full-scale invasion of Iran. With its forces tied down in Iraq, the US army simply doesn’t have the man-power to occupy a bigger, more populous country where foreign soldiers are unlikely to be greeted with flowers, sweets and copies of the Koran.

So regardless of what Washington does over the coming months, the basic structure of the political system in Iran will remain the same. A US attack would have a major impact on Iranian domestic politics. But the fundamentals of the Islamic Republic, its constitution and its rival political factions, will continue to underpin Iran’s development.

We should be grateful, then, to the Indian journalist Dilip Hiro, whose excellent new book Iran Today is the introduction anyone fresh to the subject would want. It traces the unfolding of Iranian history over the last half-century. With so much focus on the role Iran plays on the international stage, it’s important to consider the domestic factors that shape that role.

FROM MUSSADIQ TO KHOMEINI

Critics of US foreign policy are used to referencing the CIA-engineered Iranian coup of 1953 as the first entry in a roll call of shame. And rightly so – as Hiro demonstrates, the CIA and its allies pioneered all the techniques of anti-democratic subversion that were later used in Latin America.

Less well known is the nature of the government that was subverted. Prime Minister Muhammed Mussadiq was a liberal nationalist who spearheaded the campaign for oil nationalisation in the 1940s. He forged a patriotic alliance, the National Front, and won the qualified support of the communist Tudeh Party (which had a significant base in the urban working class, especially among workers in the oil industry).

Although he recognised that London would certainly oppose his moves to nationalise British oil interests, Mussadiq naively believed that Washington would support him as a democratic opponent of imperialism. But the US government embraced the British line and set out to overthrow Mussadiq. Although the Shah of Iran was enlisted for the task, Hiro makes it clear that he was dancing to Washington’s tune.

One thing that is generally overlooked about the coup against Mussadiq is that it was initially defeated. Loyal army officers routed the coup plotters, the Shah fled to Baghdad, and supporters of Mussadiq took to the streets in big numbers. It was Mussadiq himself who gave the conspirators a second chance.

Alarmed by the demands of his radical allies, who wanted to proclaim a republic, Mussadiq ordered the police to break up demonstrations by his own supporters: “He prohibited further demonstrations, urged all pro-government leaders to restrain their followers, and rejected the offer of active help from the Tudeh leadership. In short, Mussadiq unilaterally disarmed his camp, a fatal mistake.” The royalist army officers took advantage and launched a second bid for power, this time successfully.

The destruction of Iranian democracy by the CIA has had a decisive impact on the country’s political culture. In other Muslim countries, fundamentalists have been quite happy to embrace Washington (Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, for example). The anti-Americanism of the Tehran regime owes far more to the events of 1953 than it does to any religious text.

The royalist dictatorship proved to be exceptionally brutal, backed up by the sadistic torturers of Savak, the Shah’s secret police. The National Front was smashed by repression along with the Tudeh Party. While the secular opposition continued to work against the regime underground, the initiative passed to clerical opponents of the Shah, above all Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Khomeini’s first move against the dictatorship came in 1963, when he used a religious occasion to denounce the Shah as a “miserable wretch”. His speech had a sensational impact and set off a week of violent demonstrations. The Shah sent in the army to cow the opposition with tanks and machine guns: ten thousand people are said to have been killed. The following year, Khomeini was sent into exile.

With strong support from Washington and big revenues from the oil industry, the Shah set about developing Iran so that it might become a mighty power. The economy boomed, even though vast sums were diverted for celebrations of the Shah’s vanity that infuriated the Iranian people. The Shah also continued with the secularisation drive initiated by his father, granting rights to women (this top-down modernisation would prove damaging in the long run, merely reinforcing the grip of traditional values outside the affluent elite).

But the Shah’s delusional ambition to make Iran the fifth greatest power on Earth ran aground in the late seventies. A major recession sharpened discontent. The Shah hoped to pacify his opponents with some mild concessions, but liberalisation merely encouraged the anti-Shah movement to step up its efforts. The first moves came from secular opposition activists. But the deluge began in January 1978, when a pro-Shah newspaper published a vicious attack on the exiled Khomeini.

From then on Khomeini and his supporters assumed the leading role in the revolution. An escalating protest movement took on the regime, with vast numbers confronting the police and the army, despite repeated massacres of protesters. The Iranian working class played a major role in the movement, and the killer blow to the Shah was administered by the oil workers who halted production in Iran’s most vital industry. By the end of 1978, the regime was doomed, the army was falling apart as troops deserted, and the Shah soon fled into exile.

FOUNDING THE ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

Although Khomeini was clearly the dominant figure as the post-revolutionary order began taking shape, there were many competing tendencies struggling to make their voice heard. The old National Front and the Tudeh Party emerged from the underground. Khomeini’s network was challenged by leftist groups, most notably the Mujahedin-e Khalq Organisation (MKO). The MKO’s ideology blended Islam with Marxist socialism. Its activists had carried out guerrilla attacks on the royalist forces since the early seventies, and it was very popular with the sons and daughters of the middle classes.

Khomeini detested the MKO and the Tudeh Party. His own ideology was based on the principle of vilayet e-faqih – “rule of the religious jurisprudent”. According to this view, a just society requires an Islamic ruler who is familiar with the details of Sharia law. Other jurisprudents should take up positions at different levels of the state, ensuring that government policy is in line with Islamic principles. Any democratic institutions should operate within the limits set by vilayet e-faqih.

Along with those who wanted a secular political system, there were Islamic radicals who favoured a less rigid form of political Islam. But Khomeini’s supporters were able to make all the running. When their leader returned to Tehran in February 1979, three million people were there to greet him. Khomeini could rely on a powerful network of clerical allies to support him: Iran’s religious infrastructure was mobilised to secure the triumph of the hard-line Islamist perspective.

In March, the provisional government held a referendum on the question “should Iran be an Islamic republic?” 98% voted “yes”. Khomeini then ordered an Assembly of Experts to be elected in order to draft an Islamic constitution. In the meantime, his supporters had founded the Islamic Republican Party (IRP), which secured a majority in the vote for the Assembly of Experts.

The nature of the system ordained by this constitution deserves some detailed attention, for it explains a lot about recent developments in Iranian politics. The principle of vilayet e-faqih is built into the foundations of the Iranian system. Supreme authority is vested in the Leader, who is commander-in-chief of the armed forces. The Leader has the power to approve presidential candidates, and to appoint six members of the twelve-seat Guardians Council.

The role of the Guardians Council is to scrutinise legislation to make sure it is compatible with the constitution, and with Islamic principles (as interpreted by the members of the Council). All candidates for public office at national level have to be vetted by the Guardians Council for their loyalty to the constitution and Islam.

Along with these theocratic features, the Iranian constitution establishes other institutions that one would associate with a normal parliamentary democracy – an elected President, and a parliament, the Majlis, also based on universal suffrage. But these institutions can be kept firmly in check by the Leader and the Guardians Council (as we shall see). The exiled Iranian socialist Houshang Sepehr aptly describes this system as “a caliphate disguised as a republic.”

Secular and leftist forces opposed the constitution, along with elements in the Shia clergy. They would have faced an uphill struggle under any circumstances, but their fate was sealed in November 1979 when student radicals stormed the US embassy and held diplomats hostage. The embassy crisis is notorious for its impact on US politics, sinking the Carter presidency. Its impact on Iranian politics was equally deep however:

“The embassy siege united the nation and strengthened radicals at the expense of moderates. It proved to young Iranians that Khomeini and his followers were just as anti-imperialist as the competing MKO and Fedai Khalq [another leftist group], thus draining away support for secular leftists. It enabled the regime to engage the masses politically, rally popular support for the Islamic constitution, which was approved in a referendum on December 1st.”

Once the constitution was passed, the Guardians Council declared its opponents ineligible to run for parliamentary or presidential elections. At a stroke, the most important rivals to Khomeini’s IRP were excluded from the sphere of legitimate politics. The MKO went underground again and waged a terrorist campaign against the Islamist regime: 4,000 members of the party were executed. This was part of a broader crackdown that saw the universities, strongholds of the left-wing groups, shut down for three years so that orthodoxy could be imposed.

IRAN UNDER THE AYATOLLAHS

The following year, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq went to war against the Islamic republic. Hiro traces the course of the longest conventional war of the twentieth century, which saw advantage swing back and forth between the two sides, and escalating US support for Baghdad. He also notes its impact on domestic politics in Iran:

“The war enabled Khomeini to mobilise Iranians, religious and secular, on a patriotic platform, and have his own often fractious followers sink their differences on how to run the country … conscious of the cementing effect of the war, he repeatedly rejected offers of mediation and a ceasefire. Had Saddam not invaded Iran, it was likely that the fledgling Islamic Republic would have slipped into civil war.”

The MKO earned a special place in the demonology of the regime by siding with Baghdad and fighting alongside Iraqi forces on the battlefield. But despite the pressures of the war, divisions began to emerge within the ruling Islamist bloc. The IRP lacked a clear programme on socio-economic issues, and began to fracture between “pro-private sector conservatives who favoured increased diplomatic and economic links with the West (except America) and pro-public sector leftists who opposed closer ties with the West.”

This “left-right” divide was rather unique, since the opposing factions both accepted the basic premise of a theocratic system. The “leftists” also avoided using class analysis when discussing the situation of the lower classes: following the lead of Khomeini, they referred to the “needy”, not the working class.

Khomeini, who had naturally been made Leader after the constitution was adopted, played a mediating role between the factions. But he leaned towards the pro-business camp, insisting that “as long as there is Islam, there will be free enterprise.” When a major row developed over state-aided consumer co-ops that were opposed by merchants from Tehran’s vast bazaar, Khomeini made his views known: “If bazaaris are not in step with the Islamic Republic, the public will suffer defeat … the things that the government is not able to do, the government should not do. But do not prevent the bazaar from doing the things it can do.”

There was a smooth transition after Khomeini’s death in 1989. As laid out in the constitution, the Assembly of Experts (a body made up of clerics) chose his successor, Ali Husseini Khamanei – who still holds the position today. Khamanei was replaced as President by Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, who pressed ahead with a programme of economic liberalisation. While the Tehran regime was still beyond the pale as far as the US government was concerned, its economic policies were very much in line with the “Washington consensus”: “The World Bank report in December 1995 stated that the previous six years had registered an impressive advance in the implementation of structural reform in the economy.”

The leftist camp had a strong presence in the Majlis, and used that position to obstruct the policies that so pleased the World Bank. So when parliamentary elections were held in 1992, Khamanei and Rafsanjani joined forces to stack the deck against the leftists: the Guardians Council disqualified a third of the prospective candidates, including 45 sitting deputies.

THE REFORM MOVEMENT

Over the course of the nineties, the left/right axis gradually faded away, as “the different factions had converged on such vital issues as further privatisation (to include railways and petrochemicals) and maintenance of highly popular subsidies on essential items like foodstuffs, fuel and medicine. It was in the arena of political reform that differences arose.” The term in vogue was now “reformist/reformer”, which embraced anyone who was not a hard-line conservative. The reformist camp which began to come together included many who were strongly in favour of economic liberalisation.

The conservatives maintained their dominant position in the Majlis after the 1996 parliamentary elections, helped again by the Guardians Council, which excluded many leftist/reformist candidates. But the following year, a reformist candidate won a landslide victory in the presidential election, a poll in which seven out of eight eligible Iranians voted.

Ayatollah Muhammed Khatami was very much a product of the clerical establishment. Khamanei had been a disciple of Khatami’s father, and Khatami insisted on meeting the Leader to explain his ideas for reform of the Iranian system before running for office: “Khatami reportedly argued that action was required to adapt Islam to modern times and to reverse the trend toward disenchantment among Iranian voters, especially the young … since clerics had become an integral part of the state, a steady delegitimization of the state would have negative impact on them and the order they represented.”

In other words, Khatami was not proposing to dismantle the foundations of the system, merely to widen the political space within its limits. Anyone familiar with the history of Communism in Eastern Europe can’t help noting the parallels: reformers emerging from within the ranks of the ruling establishment and seeking to liberalize the system without paving the way for its collapse.

Freedom of the press became one of the key battle-grounds for the developing political conflict: “In the absence of well-organised and properly structured political parties, newspapers became their surrogates, their circulations indicating the size of their support.” Conservatives used their control over the judiciary to harass the pro-reform media, while the conservative-dominated Majlis began a series of reforms to the press law that restricted freedom of speech.

These moves set off the biggest political crisis since the Revolution in July 1999. When students at Tehran University staged a peaceful protest against the closure of a reformist newspaper, they were attacked by fundamentalist vigilantes with police complicity. This provoked a massive demonstration the following day. Not only did the students demand that the authorities punish those responsible for the attack; they raised broader demands for liberalisation, including freedom of the press, the release of political prisoners, and investigation of operations by the security apparatus against dissidents.

As the protest movement spread to campuses around the country, divisions emerged between radicals willing to challenge the whole Islamist system, and those content with reform within its limits. While Khatami condemned the raid which sparked the trouble, he also urged students to “cooperate with the government and allow law and order to be established. You should not commit illegal acts so that in calm fashion we can make a firm decision in the interests of the system.”

The following day, student demonstrators in Tehran (joined by many non-students) fought pitched battles with the security forces of the regime. Rioting broke out in parts of the city. By sunset, order had been restored with considerable brutality - although without any shots being fired. Khamanei and Khatami joined forces to condemn the unrest, and organised a big demonstration in support of the regime.

It came as a great shock to the clerical establishment to face such intense hostility from Iranian students. Careful selection procedures had been put in place after the Revolution to make sure that students came from good, pious families. While the students rocked the Islamic Republic - prompting some foreign publications to speculate about a “second Iranian revolution” - they were unable to mobilise anything like enough support to bring down the regime.

With the revolutionary path blocked, attention turned to the Majlis elections in 2000, as the pro-reform camp hoped to clear a major obstacle in its path by overturning the conservative majority. There was huge interest in the campaign, with reformist newspapers rallying support for a diverse coalition. Contrary to widespread fears, the Guardians Council did not exclude many candidates from the poll, leaving the way clear for a fairly honest vote.

The reformists won almost two-thirds of the seats for the new parliament, a resounding triumph. One commentator described the vote as “the revenge of the outsiders – groups marginalised over the years, women, youth and the modern middle class … the groups whose standard of living – culturally, politically, and economically – has declined since the revolution … for these groups, demonstrations, riots, and strikes would have costs; voting is a cost-free way to register their demand for change.”

Barely had the victory been registered, when conservative forces intervened to block any moves to implement reform. The outgoing parliament rushed through further changes to the press law, outlawing criticism of the constitution and the Leader. 14 pro-reform newspapers were shut down by the judiciary.

The immediate priority of the new Majlis was to reverse these repressive measures. But as deputies were about to commence debating the issue, they had to listen to a statement from Khamanei: “If the enemies of Islam, the revolution and the Islamic system take over or infiltrate the press, it will be a big danger to the country’s security and the people’s religious beliefs … this bill is not legitimate and not in the interest of the system.” And that was the end of the matter.

Even Khomeini had never interfered so blatantly in the political process, but there was little that could be done: criticism of the Leader was now outlawed. As Hiro explains:

”Faced with this reactionary onslaught, the reformist centrist-leftist majority in the Sixth Majlis decided to lower its horizons. It knew only too well that the institutions directly controlled by the Leader, and functioning outside the purview of the Majlis, included the Ministry of Intelligence, the judiciary, the military, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the state-run radio and television, and the richly endowed foundations which controlled a substantial segment of the economy.”

The “cost-free” route to political change proved to be a dead end. Student demonstrations on the first anniversary of the 1999 clashes included a new slogan: “Khatami, show your power or resign.” He did neither, and the reformists suffered a heavy defeat in the next Majlis elections in 2004 (their political failures were not the only reason for this – once again, the Guardians Council pruned the list of candidates with great care).

The Islamic Iranian Participation Front (IIPF) was the main organised force in the reformist camp. Its chief strategist Saeed Hajjarian reflected on the causes of the setback: “While reformists with seats in the Majlis were often thinking of compromise, those outside, the rank and file, were thinking of challenging the system in an extremist way. We should have struck a balance between challenge and compromise which we did not.”

THE RISE OF AHMADINEJAD

Hajjarian also noted that the IIPF was firmly tied to the new middle class, asking “what is our relationship with the working class?” This kind of class analysis had been missing from Iranian politics since the Revolution. The reformists had concentrated almost exclusively on political questions (in the narrow sense of the terms), neglecting social and economic issues. The consequences of this neglect became apparent in 2005, when Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was elected President.

The favourite to win the election had been Rafsanjani, running for a third term. Ahmadinejad, the mayor of Tehran, was the rank outsider. But his humble, austere image went down well with many Iranians, especially compared to the super-rich, elitist Rafsanjani. Reformist candidates trailed behind Ahmadinejad in the first round, while Rafsanjani topped the poll. In the run-off though, Ahmedinejad won a crushing victory.

Hiro describes the election as a watershed:

“[It was] the first time in post-revolutionary Iran that the presidential election was decided on the basis of social class – with peasants, workers, and the lower middle class backing Ahmadinejad, and the middle-middle, upper-middle, and upper classes Rafsanjani … with the near collapse of the reformist camp, the centre of political gravity shifted sharply to the right in religious-ideological terms and left in the economic sphere, reflecting primarily the values of the emergent working class – economically leftist but religiously and socially conservative.”

Recent local elections saw the President’s ultra-conservative allies take a pounding. But there’s no sign yet of a positive alternative to Ahmadinejad’s agenda: so far there’s little more than a loose coalition stretching from the left-leaning reformists as far as Rafsanjani, united only by dislike of the President. It’s certainly too early to say whether the reformist camp can win over the urban working class and the rural poor by adding social issues to its agenda.

IRAN AND THE BOMB

As I write, George Bush has just claimed to be “terrified” by what he knows of Iran’s nuclear programme. Having managed to work himself into quite a flurry about Iraq’s elusive WMDs, most sensible folk will take this with as much salt as they can swallow. But there can be little doubt that the clerical leadership would like Iran to become a nuclear power: with neighbours like Israel, Pakistan and India already nuked-up, and US troops occupying two of its neighbours, Tehran has reason to feel insecure. It’s quite possible that Iran already has a nuclear weapons programme - although no clear-cut evidence has been produced so far, and it seems certain that Iran is several years away from being able to produce warheads.

What should we expect if Iran does start producing nukes, along with delivery systems? One thing should be clear enough from the events we have surveyed: in the last analysis, power lies with the Leader, not the President. If Khamanei was able to keep a leash on Khatami and the reformists, he should be able to do the same with Ahmadinejad. So menacing statements by the President about Israel should not be taken as proof that Iran would attack the Jewish state with nuclear weapons, given the chance. Ahmadinejad seems to have a taste for provoking western sensitivities (as shown by his odious gathering of Holocaust deniers) and his word is not decisive by any means.

In a careful, detailed study published recently in the New York Times, Noah Feldman of the establishment Council on Foreign Relations concluded that “it is almost certainly a mistake to anticipate that Iran would use its nuclear power in a way that would provoke large-scale retaliation and assured self-destruction … Ahmadinejad surely understands the consequences of using a nuclear bomb, and Shiite Islam, even in its messianic incarnation, still falls short of inviting nuclear retaliation and engendering collective suicide.(1)”

This does not mean, of course, that we should be happy to see Iran develop nuclear weapons. Every time a new country joins the club, the risk of a nuclear exchange becomes higher. Iran could set off a regional arms race, with Egypt and Saudi Arabia rushing to follow in order to maintain their position. But alarmist talk of a new Hitler (yet another one…) flinging nukes about the Middle East seems utterly misplaced.

US domestic politics will strongly affect the outcome of this show-down, as will the situation in Iraq. It seems certain that any US attack on Iran, even a limited one, will reinforce the position of conservatives in the ruling establishment and further damage the reform movement. Whether the reformists can recover their former dynamism and reach sections of the population that were neglected previously is very much an open question. Washington could tip the balance for the foreseeable future if the war-mongers win out.

(1)Noah Feldman, “Islam, Terror and the Second Nuclear Age”, New York Times October 29th 2006

Note – this article has largely ignored the place of women in Iranian society – not, of course, because I consider this question unimportant, but because issues of class and economic policy have often been neglected in discussion of Iran, while gender has received much more attention. Anyone who wants to correct this omission will find what they need in Hiro’s book.